Current and future aspects of HLA in transfusion medicine, transplantation and cellular therapy

摘要

The current and future role of gene products of the HLA system in transfusion medicine, transplantation and cellular therapy is briefly discussed.The HLA complex is located on a chromosomal segment on the short arm of chromosome 6 (6p21-31). It is also referred to as the human major histocompatibility complex - MHC, a cluster of genes encoding molecules that have immuno-logical functions and govern histocompatibility. Such a MHC has been found in all vertebrates studied so far. In humans, it is arranged in two chromosomal regions named HLA class I and HLA class II; the chromosomal region in between those two has been designated 'HLA class III' [see e.g. 1]. A complete gene map for a single, artificial HLA haplotype has been assembled, and its contiguous nucleo-tide sequence has been determined. In this refined analysis, the HLA complex has turned out to be one of the most gene-dense regions of the human genome, as it contains at least 300 expressed loci.